The Latest Bounce

Rural Nevadans may ask for a little federal
help in an epic water fight. Las Vegas is moving forward
with a controversial plan to pump groundwater from beneath the
Great Basin (HCN, 9/19/05: Squeezing Water from a Stone). Now, some
citizens in rural White Pine County are looking to curtail that
plan by asking their commissioners to endorse a proposal to create
a 323,000-acre federal preserve around the existing Great Basin
National Park and include it in a public-lands bill that the Nevada
delegation is currently drafting. The proposal was inspired by
Congress’ designation of the Great Sand Dunes National
Monument in Colorado’s San Luis Valley in 2000 — a move
intended, in part, to protect the valley from a similar project
that would have pumped water to the Denver area.

Is clean energy just a new excuse for more political
grandstanding? In his Jan. 31 State of the Union address,
President Bush announced an "Advanced Energy Initiative" that
includes increased attention on renewable energy technology. But in
early February, 32 workers at the Department of Energy’s
National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., lost their
jobs after Congress cut funding for renewable energy and energy
efficiency programs (HCN, 2/6/06: Lawmakers chop up
renewable-energy fund). Then, on Feb. 19 — just two days
before Bush was scheduled to visit the renewable energy lab —
Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., announced that the Energy Department
was able to shift enough money from other programs to bring the
fired employees back to work.

You can’t
buy it at a roadside stand, and 4-H doesn’t give any prizes
for it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a real
crop. Washington state officials say that the $270 million worth of
marijuana plants they seized last year makes pot the No. 8
agricultural commodity in the state, ahead of cherries (HCN,
10/31/05: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop). Officials won’t
estimate how much more marijuana — much of which is grown on
public lands — they didn’t get their hands on. It may
still be a while, however, before pot overtakes apples,
Washington’s No. 1 crop, which bring in nearly a billion
dollars a year.